e-biking in Kansas City

I don’t mean to be critical, but who is the blithering idiot who designed this?

The intersection of Brookside Boulevard, Main Street and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard, already a testament to engineering incompetence, has gotten even more absurd with the addition of the streetcar tracks.

The general configuration of the intersection comes from a past redesign of the stroads (street-road hybrid disaster) that feed traffic into the Country Club Plaza from the east. As usual, that meant funneling as many vehicles through the area as fast as possible using as many acres of concrete and asphalt as possible. Even at this, it fails.

Now comes the streetcar. Both tracks sit in dedicated space on the east side of the bridge over Brush Creek where . Westbound traffic entering the intersection goes either left or right and cannot go straight. Three lanes make a sweeping turn to the right–and straight into streetcar space. The city has tacked up an array of signs telling drivers not to enter the streetcar lanes, but it has built a road that lures them in.

One sign, posted high above the driver’s field of vision, says “Do Not Cross Tracks”. But, given the tracks run perpendicular to the road, drivers must cross the tracks to go either north on Main or south on Brookside.

Then off to the right, outside the driver’s field of vision, is a Do Not Enter sign (except Buses and Streetcar), but Do Not Enter what?

In the middle of the road there is a short curb. Drivers are supposed to go beyond the curb and then take a sharp right on Main, but the natural thing to do is turn before the curb, although that might give them a face-full of streetcar.

The pavement has a brick-red pattern ripped from a book of Rorschach ink blots. When I look at it, what I see is an image of road carnage. Others may see something different.

Finally, another sign says “Do Not Drive on Tracks.” Again, taken literally, this is impossible.

Currently there are traffic cones all over the place. It’s confusing but to drive into the streetcar station takes real effort without hitting cones. When the cones are removed (if they ever are), it will take effort NOT to drive into the station.

Let’s stop obsessing over cars for a minute and think briefly of cyclists and pedestrians. Okay, now that we have done that, back to cars.

Seriously though, pedestrians and cyclists are totally screwed here. To get from point A to point B takes a bizarre combination of crosswalks, each requiring the dreaded “beg” for a light. I’ve timed it and it literally takes a figurative week to cross from the northeast to the southwest corner. That crumpled pile of white sticks you see isn’t an obliterated flex pole but the calcified skeleton of someone who expired waiting for the walk light.

Looking north on Brookside/Main. The other side of the intersection can be seen on the horizon.

Now there’s nothing worth less than a critic with no solutions to offer. And I’m okay with that. But in this case, I do have a solution. I have superimposed the traffic circle of the Arc d’ Triomphe (Arch of Trump) on the Champs d’Elysee (Chiefs are Champs) on this intersection, and…it fits! So all we need do is triumph over something, build a monument to it and put a traffic circle around it. And then we can get rid of all the silly signs.

Postscript: Saturday evening (September 6) a car hit the streetcar in this intersection. Here’s a panorama of the scene, which resulted in a dinged up streetcar, a totaled car, traffic snarled in all directions and a big street party for first responders.